(bright music) - Hello and welcome to Farm Connections.

I'm your host Dan Hoffman.

On today's episode, we join students from Byron as they learn about our history through agriculture at Farm America, all here today on Farm Connections.

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- Welcome to Farm Connections.

We traveled to Waseca, Minnesota to Farm America and we're fortunate enough to have Jessica Rollins, the executive director with us.

Thanks for joining us on Farm Connections.

- Thanks for coming back again.

- Well, there's so much going on here, but what's happening today?

- Oh, today is a really extra fun day.

So lots of times in the summer we are doing private day camps and we'll talk about those in a bit so like smaller groups are coming in.

But today we have a really large group of students coming in from Byron Minnesota and we usually don't do this large of a group in the summertime.

It's usually more of something we're experiencing during field trips in the spring and the fall.

But we have 150 first through sixth graders from Byron here today on site to do a tour and experience the story of agriculture.

- And they're so excited.

They're bright-eyed and bushy-tailed.

They got off the bus this morning really anticipating some great things.

So what are they gonna see today?

- They're gonna do kind of a traditional field trip experience, so they will be walking around is when I was getting a little tractor wagon ride around the site and learning everything from what life was like before European settlers arrived to 1850s settlement, country school, 1930s farm site, live blacksmith doing demonstrations and the Ag Around You Discovery Center to help kids connect to the story of agriculture today in their lives.

- And what's really fun, they're joining us right now right in the center?

- Yes.

They are.

- What stations will they find here in Jessica?

- So here in the visitor center at Farm America, we have the Ag Around You Discovery Center, which is kind of shaped like a silo.

And that whole space is built as a living space vignette.

So it feels like you're walking into your home except that every drawer says open me or push me or pull me.

And there's videos to help them connect to farmer stories of Minnesota farmers, there's lots of products in there that help them understand that everything stems from agriculture and natural resources here on site.

- Well it's so fun to watch them interface with the place, the people and also the displays.

What does it do for you when you see this happening?

- It fills my bucket.

It makes me very happy.

- Well you did a lot of work to get the displays here and there's a lot of people beyond you that help.

Can can you enumerate on that a little bit?

- Yeah.

So we have a small but mighty staff.

We have a fabulous group of volunteers.

So anytime we have a group this large coming in, we just don't have the staff capacity to, to have all of these experiences available to all the students at once.

So we have lots of volunteers who help.

We have specific committees who take care of this space and love it.

We had a specific group of volunteers come and give some of our sites a little bit of a facelift over the summer as well.

And then those who help us fundraise, we also have those folks who love to go out and open doors for us so we can find new folks to help contribute to the story of agriculture.

- What would a volunteer do today?

- Today we have lots of opportunities and most of our volunteers today are retired folks.

So we have volunteers interpreting the spaces at the 1930s farm site talking about the farm animals, someone's in the farmhouse explaining what life was like in the farmhouse and how that, how that all went down and what was similar and what's different to today.

Someone's in the schoolhouse today as well and students get to sit in a desk and one of our volunteers is leading an activity with them and comparing and contrasting the school life.

A blacksmith volunteer who we have has a actual fire going in the forge and will make physical little tiny horseshoes for the kids to see and understand the value of blacksmithing back in the past and how it's changed and evolved over time today.

So volunteers receive a script from us and talking points and we help train them and walk them through what to expect and how to work with youth.

And then from there if they have some other little personal stories they wanna add in, they're welcome to do that and then the students rotate to the next little spot and learn some more information.

- Sounds really enriching for the students and also the volunteers and the organization.

How would someone find out more about Farm America so they could volunteer?

- Yeah, so it's as simple as going to our website farmamerica.org and we have a specific page set up for volunteers and if there's even a page, if they want to fill out that volunteer form to say raise their hand and say yes, I wanna be part of this great organization, that page is waiting for them on our website.

- How can they go wrong?

They get training, they get support, they get a wonderful place to be and they get to work with some great young people and then sometimes not so young people, right?

- Yep.

So we do guided tours and self-guided tours and sometimes we have some of our interpreters come out to help with those guided tours as well.

And that's open to any age group at all.

So you might have some little toddlers running around, you might have some grandparents running around so you'll get to be a volunteer and experience all of that.

And one of our volunteers today actually is a high school kid, which is kind of rare for us.

Like I said, most of them are actually retired.

But we have a student on site who's from the good funder area and, and he has an interest in blacksmithing.

So it worked out in his schedule for him to come out today and he's helping out in the blacksmith shop with Wyatt our resident blacksmith.

So it's a great opportunity for any age to volunteer at Farm America.

- Pretty awesome.

I noticed some of the volunteers are driving trams and tractors.

- Yep, there's that too.

If you don't have that educational bug and you don't wanna be speaking necessarily to students with a script, you can also drive an antique tractor with a wagon, pull behind it and help our students get around the site a little faster.

- And it's certainly not lost on me today Jessica.

The amount of work and dedication that you and the staff have put into this board of directors, volunteers, donors, but it's not lost on me.

The energy that came in this space this morning.

Both from staff volunteers but also the young peoples.

They come in, I think we've got a bright future.

- Yes we do.

They were respectful and excited and and asking questions like as soon as they walked through the door.

So we are really, we're really thankful to have groups like this on site.

- The educators must have groomed them for this experience.

- I think they might have.

Yes.

Which we are thankful for.

Everybody has a better experience if they're able to hear the interpreter giving them information and if, if they're able to interact with the space safely, everybody wins.

- Absolutely.

And what's the mission here?

What are you trying to accomplish?

- So the whole overarching mission, we really wanna connect Minnesotans, anybody honestly we wanna connect people to that evolving story of agriculture through hands-on educational experiences.

So we want people to know where we've been and understand where we are and be excited about where agriculture and the ag industry in general is going in the future.

So that's what we want folks to, to leave with that information and that fun experience.

- Great mission.

Why is it important?

- It's important for a lot of reasons.

Personally it's important to me 'cause I grew up on a farm, I married a farmer.

We are raising kids on the farm but not everybody is like that.

There's less than 2% of the population growing all of this food and making all of this happen for the a hundred percent of us who need to eat and consume products.

So our space helps people see how that has changed and it helps them understand and respect and feel comfortable with what farmers are doing today on the farm because they might not personally know a farmer in their lives.

- Pretty important, 2% feeding everyone.

- Yes, it blows my mind.

God bless technology, it is helping us.

- Absolutely.

And of course our farmers have allowed us to use our time other people, the other 98% to do other things.

And some of those are ag jobs as well, correct?

- Yes.

That is right.

And we have a fun activity actually at the Prairie that the students do to get to experience what life was like as a hunter and gatherer and where your only you spent the entire day making sure you had food and water for yourself and your family and that is just survival.

And then they can progress from that hands-on activity to the 1850s to see how European settlers came over and figured out how to use some machines and use a little bit of technology so they could feed their family and maybe have a little bit leftover for their neighbor.

And the whole story just progresses that we discover once you introduce agriculture and some crops in a row of any kind, you don't have to work so hard to hunt and gather for everything that you need to survive.

Which like you said, frees up the time for other people to do other really neat jobs and make inventions and focus on the nutrition for the livestock as well as nutrition for ourselves.

So thousands of jobs are possible basically because farmers and technology have evolved to the way that it has.

- Absolutely.

You mentioned nutrition technology.

Do you think these students by being here learn to be better consumers?

- Yes, I think that they do.

I think it makes them aware.

We do an activity before they even leave the building to go out on site with the other interpreters.

We do an activity to give them this aha moment that everything that we have as consumers stems from the farm or natural resources.

And a lot of 'em are surprised by that, they're gonna drop this product, this cell phone into the bucket that it came from a factory.

It did come from a factory but where did it come from before that?

And then we take it a step back and talk about the natural resources involved in that so that they can be more conscientious consumers as they leave this space.

- Are there other programs that will be coming up or can be customized for the audience?

- Yeah.

We do.

We do lots of different programs.

Some of them are themed events on weekends that are open to the public.

Some of them work out better if you call ahead in advance and we work on a plan.

So most of our summer programs that we do are with youth in school aged care programs.

So the kids who you can't quite leave at home yet 'cause you just don't trust that 12 year old.

You know, you send 'em those summer school age programs and a lot of those places reach out to us and say hey what can we do at Farm America so the kids aren't just sitting in this space, let's get them outside.

They reach out to us and we kind of customize and format a day camp experience for them so they can pick from our a la carte menu of different fun hands-on activities.

Most of which will involve like seeing our livestock running through the corn maze.

We have drones now, I don't know if I even told you that we have some drones so that the students get to use drones and understand how that connects to farming and agriculture.

So the teachers or the instructors will call us, we'll set up a plan, what works best for you guys, here's the price range if that's what you wanna do.

They make the payment in advance, the students come out the day of and we just have a fabulous time rotating through fun hands-on activities.

And that's really, it's so rewarding in the summertime we have the folks as well who do the self-guided tours and you can book those online or they'll walk in just 'cause they saw the sign on the road and wanna do a self-guided tour with our booklet or they'll want a guided tour with one of our staff members as an interpreter and we'll take them out and and walk them through all the sites and talk about it with them.

And that fills up our summer.

And then there's Meetapalooza and there's goat yoga.

Dan, we don't even have enough time to talk about all this.

- What about pizza?

- Oh and we had the acres of pizza as well.

So we are just cramming everything we can.

Like every true Minnesotan does.

You cram as much as you can into the summer, you spend some of the winter prepping and planning and then you do it all over again.

- And you do it well.

Can you give that website one more time?

- Yeah, you just gotta go to farmamerica.org or we're always on Facebook and Instagram as well with updated pictures and activities.

- Thanks for the great work you do.

- Thanks so much Dan.

(bright music) - We are here at Farm America and with me is Alec Ziegler.

Alec you just came outta the blacksmith shop.

What's going on in there?

- A lot of fun things.

We're giving tours to these kids that are coming in over back there and it's just a lot of fun.

We're tending the fire and hammering some metal.

- Well you've probably enjoyed working with metal on your farm as well, correct?

- Yep.

So I have some past experience.

I built myself a propane forage and I have a little anvil there and I just hammer some stuff out.

One time we've had to fix a mower axle and just general repairs, nothing much.

Not too often.

- But you're getting better and better, right?

- Yep.

And the reason why, another way I'm getting better is by those two in there.

They're just teaching me so much stuff that I had no idea about.

- Wyatt and his wife, correct?

And they're doing a demo today for young people.

What age group are these students?

- I think K through five.

- And if I understand right, you came here as a youth as well.

- I came here in fourth grade for the school field strip, but sadly the blacksmith shop wasn't open when I was here.

I learned about it through some family members and I just wanted to come back 'cause it was such a great experience.

- Awesome.

So you're returning the favor of that wonderful time when you were in elementary school.

While you're working with a very skilled blacksmith, what kinds of things have you learned today?

- Well first off that I was hammering everything completely wrong and that this is going to, my generation's really impatient.

I gotta learn how to be patient.

The work will come to me and I don't have to make anything.

I just have to learn the skills.

Then I can do stuff with it.

- What did Wyatt teach you about changing your technique with hammering?

- So when you're normally hammering, it's just you hit it hard and hope it sticks in there.

With blacksmithing it's more like you're trying to move it so you just little tap here sometimes a big swing on this side, get it flat and don't leave any divots in the metal that you can see after you're done heating it.

- So it's a skill that's learned and acquired?

- Yes, very much so.

- And as you get more and more skills, what are you gonna do with projects at your farm?

- Probably gonna expand out, like try to like build some more stuff like maybe the house, like hooks that we can put on walls or maybe like nails if I wanted to get some skills down.

Just general ease of access.

- You mentioned that people in your generation are impatient.

Can you tell me any more about that?

What do you mean by that?

- Well, like everything is so easy for us to access 'cause we have something called cell phones and everything's just a push of a button here you can look up a YouTube tutorial 15 minutes and they already think we're, we already think we're great at things.

- Technology has done some things to shorten up our attention span, hasn't it?

Well hats off to you for recognizing that and doing some things about it.

What do you hope that people watching the show learn from you?

- That step outside your comfort zone, get out there and learn something new.

- In this case, Farm America.

And there's several opportunities for that.

There's a website.

When you go back home, which is where?

- In Maple River.

- Do you ever have any expositions at Maple River for people?

- Sometimes we bring people out to our farm from like MSU 'cause our dad is really big into the college and he sometimes brings out tours to our farm to show people what it's like to live on a farm.

- That's very nice to share in that way.

When people come into the blacksmith shop today, what is it that you hope to, to learn from you?

- [Alec] That it's not just you hit metal, it's more, it's more like intricate than just big hammer hit metal.

- And what's your favorite project that you've made with metal?

- Hmm.

How I actually started it was I wanted to make a Mother's Day gift, so I wanted to make a kitchen knife for my mother.

And it was a lot of fun, but it wasn't really much blacksmithing.

It was more of, you heat it up, flatten it out, and then use a grinder.

- What do you see in the future?

Will you be attending college or are you in college at this time?

- I'm hoping to attend college.

I'm going into 10th grade sophomore year and going want to go into something with science, blacksmithing will probably be a hobby that I keep throughout it though.

- Awesome.

What do you hope people learn from Farm America?

- That history should be preserved.

And it's good to know your history.

- Why do you think history should be preserved and why is it good to know it?

- It's good to know what people had to do in the past so you can see what's gonna happen in the future.

- And maybe even appreciate what we've got.

Right?

- Yep.

- Appreciate so much you and you sharing.

Thank you Alec.

- Thank you.

- More on Farm Connections.

Stay tuned.

(bright music) Farm Connections crew traveled to Waseca, Minnesota to Farm America and then we stopped at the blacksmith shop.

How would you like to meet the Smithy at Farm America?

Mr. Wyatt Bienfang.

Wyatt, thanks for having us.

- You're very welcome.

You're very welcome.

- This looks like a pretty important place in history, but also for a farm and a farming community.

Tell us about it.

- It was, it was essential.

It's where everybody came to make, create and need things fixed, built and repaired.

It was necessity.

Maybe like I tell the kids it was not always want, but you needed to come here for the town to go.

It was a hub.

- Well, I gathered that when I stepped inside and it said Meridan town hall.

- Yeah.

Absolutely.

That, well, one cool thing about this historical one is they had a town hall on top and the blacksmith shop underneath.

You don't see that very often.

So to be able to spend time in a beautiful shop like this and love blacksmithing.

Yeah, I'm coming, I'm coming.

- But I think it speaks to the historical piece of community coming together over the blacksmith shop because it was that essential moving as you referenced with the young people from horsepower to later more mechanization, right?

- Oh, absolutely.

It was a place where fathers and moms sent their boy to go, go find something to do, right?

And we paid 'em by candy to be a part of this.

It's where problems were discussed, solutions were solved and you know, it was trying to get machines in here.

Is this good enough to repair or should I get new?

And a lot of blacksmith stops went from the horse and buggy to fixing to Model T's and those that stayed in that line of work.

So it was essential, it helped us move.

- I'm guessing some of those farm boys and girls that spend time in the blacksmith shop later became people who worked for Ford Motor or for other car companies.

- Absolutely.

You look in this shop and it's like, what is that wrench?

Well that's actually a buggy wrench and that one's a model T wrench.

You bet they did.

- And probably tractor and farm implement companies too.

- You walk in here and you can see what happened in the progression.

You can see all the still the more shears in here, the cutting blades, the rivets in here.

You can see the transition of the line go.

Absolutely.

- You also had a helper there.

What is she doing?

- Well, blacksmith was a way of life.

That is my beautiful bride that's in there.

Susie's my, she's my forge apprentice today.

She's cranking a forge.

This is old style.

So we got an air crank going on in here and keeping things rolling.

Blacksmiths had families that was about a blacksmith family.

So she, she works at a forage back home.

She knows the trade.

- As she turned that and air moved through the coals, what happened?

- As I explained to the kids, the harder she cranks, the more air comes through, the hotter my fire gets.

And that is the magic of the blacksmith shop.

Everybody was a blacksmith.

Everybody was a "do it themselves" at home.

But the wonderful magic about the forge was, in a blacksmith shop is it got really hot.

And when it got hot and you could bring it to milting you were a welder for two, three hits and then you were back to a blacksmith.

- So you talked a lot about metallurgy with the students and also color of the metal as it goes through transformation and heat.

Any more on that you can share with the audience.

- I think one of the things everybody notices when they come into blacksmith shop is it's dark in here, you know, but you need to see the color, the color of the metal teaches you the temperature of the metal.

And I know modern day time everybody loves their forging fire, but the true work of this was is that it may be cast, it may be this, it may be that.

And the blacksmith had to know which kind of metal it was to make it actually work together.

- Do you actually do some tempering of the steel and metal here too?

- Here?

No.

I mean the classes come, it's 25 minutes and you got all grades and all interests and questions and excitement.

But the process of showing how metal can turn to liquid and heat and that it's there.

Yes.

But the cool thing about these moments with school tours is, is you're just planting seeds and you're hoping they're picking them up.

- Tell me more about planting seeds.

- Well, yes.

Okay.

I love blacksmithing and I want to come to work a beautiful historical shop like that.

But what Farm America provides is the beautiful gift of children.

They come here and they say, oh, if you don't have a television or a Nintendo or this cell phone in the hand, no.

When you show kids how it was and they can smell it, they can see it and they're, they're in with you.

It's so fun.

- Their eyes got big.

- Oh yes.

It's so fun.

And they're curious.

I mean, what an amazing place to be is take history and all that happened here.

All the hard work of people trying to keep this going, right?

And the excitement and thrill of little children coming who want to learn.

Yeah.

Let's go.

Let's be a part of it.

- And thank you and your wife for coming here and sharing what your expertise.

It's almost a lost art, isn't it?

- It is.

The mentors who I've worked under, I hope to see them one day if I get to heaven and be with those guys.

And so I'm kind of the last of the school coming through on traditional work, which is really important.

I mean, if we weren't here, we love Pioneer Power in Le Sueur and we run the blacksmith shop there and it's for the same passionate reason I speak to you today, why we come, it's being around that.

So yeah.

It's important to us.

- Well that's usually towards the end of August.

- That 25th, 26th, 27th this year.

It's that last weekend of August coming in before that wonderful holiday.

- So how you talked about planting seeds and you talked about the Pioneer Power Association in Le Sueur.

How are you transitioning from the people you said have already moved on.

Taking the skills they gave you, the skills you now possess.

How are you handing that off?

- That's a great question.

Seriously.

That's the question we all want 'cause we don't want these to become museums.

The Pioneer Power like Farmer America today bring history to life, right?

And we want that to happen.

So we are bringing it to our grandchildren.

We are bringing it to the track.

Grandpa, don't sell it at an auction.

Bring it down the line.

I can tell you right now that I have two apprentices working there.

Their grandpas and moms and dads are at Pioneer Power, but nobody messes with little Henry and Little Wyatt 'cause they know they're apprentices and us.

And when I'm tired and I can't pick up the hammer or they're ready to go, they've got the spark in the love in here.

We're encouraging that the grandpas and grandma's who have tractors, they, they don't give 'em away anymore that they pass 'em down to their children and there's a line that we started this year, brand new, this is my tractor now, but it came from, from my great grandpa.

Yes, my dad ran the John Deere 4020, but this one's mine now.

And that pride.

So we know we have to pass the torch.

We know and we have to get them.

- They're our future, including the youth that are here today.

- [Wyatt] Absolutely.

- Well you talked about a hammer.

I brought yours outta the smith shop.

- Thank you.

I was hoping you weren't gonna thinking you were keeping that.

- No, I'm not worthy.

You wield it well.

- Thank you.

- So you strike the metal when it's hot.

And you press it against an anvil that's solid.

And you're shaping.

- Shaping metal.

- What's your greatest satisfaction of shaping metal?

- It is the creativity the old guys gave me to take something that you not really sure how it works and goes and work through the process of it, starting from the beginning to the end and have it work.

That's pretty fun.

- And you do it well.

- Thank you.

- May it be for many more generations.

- I love it.

Thank you so much.

- Thanks for joining us.

(hammer clanking) History can be fun, educational and inspirational.

It can be informative as well.

It's a real-world cautionary tale that helps us grow as long as we remember to heed the advice of those that laid the groundwork before us.

I'm Dan Hoffman.

Thanks for joining us on Farm Connections.

(upbeat music begins) (upbeat music continues) (bright music)